September 15th

Megan and I woke up early (like at 5:45am) to take a sunrise walk along the beach and check out the sea shells at low tide. It was a bit cloudy so we didn't really catch the breath taking view we were hoping for....but we did walk about as far in each direction along our hotel's beach as we could without getting too far out of site.

After the beach stroll we went up to the Nikko Club and got our last free breakfast there. We then went down to the beach and swam in the seaweed infested water! We literally got strangled by countless floating seaweed -- just down the beach they harvest it, so this was debris from the growing patches. Jerad then stared at the many Russian girls wearing thong bikinis as Megan was more ammused by the Russian men in their slim little speedos and their massive guts rolling over the tops! Muffin tops as we call it!

We went back to the room, cleaned up and packed as Dharma and our driver met us at the hotel at noon to drive us up to Ubud. Megan and I took Dharma to lunch as it was his 37th birthday the day before at Jazz Bar and Grill in Sanur. We kept on seeing the name Adi every where, and this reminded us of Wael Adi, a coworker of Jerad, and adi mean "the first".

On the way to Ubud we stopped at Radado Painting gallery and after some hard fought Paul Harbaugh style bargaining, bought 3 paintings by a famous Balanse artist by the name of Imade Tinggal who was born in Denpasar in 1967 and made famous for his modern style paintings. We got the painting for 6 times less than the price they were asking...not bad.

We checked into the Maya Ubud Resort and walked around the hotel premesis, which is massive. It's much different than the beach resort we stayed at in Nusa Dua. The Maya is situation along several rivers that wind through the mountains and villages in the center of the island. This hotel was voted one of the Hideaway Magazines top 100 hotels in the world and rightfully so, it's amazing, so pretty, so much vegetation, activities to do, great spa, nice pools, good food...

We got the buffet dinner and watched Legong Dancers perform on the hotels stage along the river. By the end of dinner we were totally beat from the early morning, the long drive, and the hot weather conditions, so we hit the hay for a good night's rest.